The Norrises

Theirs Is a Literary Tandem

On their return from Europe, Charles and Kathleen Norris spent some weeks in Manhattan before seeking their California ranch life. This highly literary family is always interesting; for both Mr. Norris and his wife are vivid, keen-minded, hospitable.

"I've abandoned monosyllabic titles," the author of Salt, Brass and Bread told me. "What," I then asked, "is to be the title of your next novel?" "Pig Iron," he replied--and the joke seemed to be on me. Charles Norris says that he can produce only one novel every two years; that he is 75,000 words towards the finish of this new study of the struggle between materialism and the spirit, and that means only half done. While in Italy, he worked every day, from early morning until late afternoon. Mr. Norris does not write with the flow and the passion of his wife, who publishes, as a rule, one novel a year and a certain number of short stories.

It is interesting to hear Mrs. Norris tell of early struggles in New York, of how they married on a salary that sounds staggeringly small to us in these days; but, ''before we knew it," and almost imperceptibly, the necessary sacrifices were made and reasonable prosperity began.

It must be a great joy for two persons to be intellectually as well-mated as these two. Here they were, with their young son and three Benet children (for a branch of the literary Benets are nieces and nephews) starting off for California,, with all possible gaiety. In the Autumn they plan to return to Manhattan and, hereafter, to work there for at least half the year. "If it's possible to work in New York," Mr. Norris added. Then, "Is it?" The answer is, I think: It's possible to write anywhere if you are surrounded by intelligent and sympathetic friends who are willing to furnish stimulation without insisting on distraction. Such friends, it is easy to see, the Norrises are to each other.

Kathleen Norris has a new collection of Irish short stories appearing this Spring, The Callahans and the Murphys. She started life as a newspaper woman; there is much of her more intimate story, I fancy, in her most ambitious recent work Certain People of Importance. She is unlike her husband and his brilliant brother, the late Frank Norris, for she is incurably romantic. In her drabbest pages of realism-- and there are not many of them-- she maintains the values of sentiment and emotion. Her husband, however, writes with unusual objectivity. He proceeds on a character-basis he believes true and he is faithful to that truth, which is often a trifle bitter.

J. F.